Natural language interfaces to databases

Abstract

This paper reviews the state of the art in natural language access to
databases. This has been a long-standing area of work in natural
language processing. But though some commercial systems are now
available, providing front ends has proved much harder than was
expected, and the necessary limitations on front ends have to be
recognised. The paper discusses the issues, both general to language and
task-specific, involved in front end design, and the way these have been
addressed, concentrating on the work of the last decade. The focus is on
the central process of translating a natural language question into a
database query, but other supporting functions are also covered. The
points are illustrated by the use of a single example application. The
paper concludes with an evaluation of the current state, indicating that
future progress will depend on the one hand on general advances in
natural language processing, and on the other on expanding the
capabilities of traditional databases.